Research, conducted by the Institute of Catholic Church Statistics (ISKK), indicates that the number of people attending Roman-Catholic holy mass on Sundays increased in 2017 by 1.6 percentage points y/y.

This result means that around 500,000 more people went to church on Sundays. Moreover, the research shows that around 300,000 more Catholics took communion during mass, which is an increase of one percentage point compared to 2016.

According to the ISKK, 38.3 percent of declared Catholics took part in Sunday masses, and 17 percent of them took communion. In 2016 it was 36.7 percent and 16 percent respectively.

The highest percentages of holy mass attendance were recorded in the dioceses of Tarnów, southern Poland (71.7 percent), Rzeszów (64.1 percent) and Przemyśl (59.8 percent), both south-eastern Poland. The lowest was in Szczecin-Kamieńsk, north-western Poland and Łódź, central Poland (both 24.6 percent), as well as Koszalin-Kołobrzeg, northern Poland (25.6 percent).

Priest Wojciech Sadłoń, the director of ISKK, said that these statistics point out to the institutional stability of the Roman-Catholic Church in Poland. “A huge number are taking the sacrament, it is almost universal,” he said.

Research has also shown that as many as 10,392 parishes were operating in Poland in 2017, 53 more than a year before. The number of priests incardinated to the Polish dioceses was 24,917.